Night of the Purple Moon (22 page)

Mandy escorted Abby throughout the downstairs. “Twenty of us are still alive,” she began. “We started out with twenty-eight. Most of us were in the same seventh-grade class. A couple of sixth-graders joined us.”

Several empty cans with sharp lids were on the floor, making it a dangerous place to crawl. “How many babies live here?” Abby asked.

“Kenny says they’re too hard to take care of.”

Had she heard Mandy correctly?

“There are twenty-seven of us on Castine Island,” Abby said. “Chloe is fourteen months old. Clive is a month older.” She told Mandy all about the mansion and their nightly meetings and how they shared duties. “Even my three-year old sister has a job. Her name’s Toucan.”

Mandy pointed to a portable propane stove. “We use it to melt snow,” she said.

Abby thought it strange that Mandy showed no interest in how they lived on Castine Island.

“During the summer,” Mandy continued, “we bathe in the harbor. Once the ocean gets too cold, we switch to cornstarch. If you sprinkle it over your body, it absorbs the odors and oil from your skin.”

So the white powder on the floors was corn starch.

“How come everyone seems to be wearing new clothes?” Abby asked.

Mandy paused. “Oh, there’s a Target store close by.”

They stepped outside and Mandy gestured across the street. “We go to the bathroom over there.”

“We use our backyard,” Abby said. “We built a fence to keep the coyotes away.”

“Coyotes?” Mandy’s eyes widened, finally interested in something about the island. “We have to worry about other gangs. If they catch you, they’ll take the clothes off your back.”

Abby felt her eyebrows lifting. “Like you wanted to do to me,” she said to herself.

The gang’s most prized possessions were their motorcycles. “Kenny’s older brother sold motorcycles,” Mandy said. “Kenny taught all of us how to ride.”

The question had been on the tip of Abby’s tongue and now she asked it. “If Kenny says babies are too hard to take care of, what happened to them? Some of you must have had younger brothers and sisters who survived.”

Mandy gave her a cold stare. “You live on a little island. All you have to worry about are a few coyotes. We had riots. Thousands of kids starved. It was kill or be killed. It’s great that you have your nurseries and your nightly meetings, but we couldn’t have done that kind of thing here.”

“What happened to the babies, Mandy?”

Mandy’s expression of anger briefly gave way to sadness. She narrowed her eyes again and stared at Abby with hatred. About to speak, she shook her head and stormed away.

Abby stood alone on the porch for a while, the strong breeze ruffling her hair. She finally went inside and trudged up the stairs, furious at Mandy but even angrier with herself. Why couldn’t she have kept her big mouth shut?

Abby’s eyes shot open when Jordan groaned in pain. He was on the other side of the mattress. She watched him, but he made no further sounds.

The sky had lightened but she couldn’t tell if the sun had risen because of the cloud cover. The leaves on the tree outside the window rustled in a strong breeze. Abby imagined them harnessing the wind in the skiff and sailing into Boston Harbor, right up to the end of the airport runway, where doctors met them with bags of pills.

“I’m so cold,” Jordan said through chattering teeth.

Abby quickly dismissed her fantasy to care for her brother. She had awoken earlier in the night to find him shivering and covered him with a blanket. He had screamed when it brushed against his back, letting Abby know how far his rash had advanced. Now she pulled the blanket just over his legs.

Abby recalled her heated exchange with Mandy. She did not regret
what
she had said but
how
she had said it. What Mandy had said was true. Abby had no idea of the horrors the mainland kids faced in the days and weeks after the purple moon. No matter what they had faced, though, Abby would always believe they should have cared for the babies.

Abby also wondered if Mandy had betrayed her trust, telling Kenny about the CDC radio station. Kenny would dump them in a second. If the gang traveled to Boston without them, perhaps she and Jordan could resume sailing. Prepare for anything and everything, Abby told herself.

She got out of bed and tried to get Jordan up. Feverish and glassy-eyed, he rolled over and closed his eyes. She asked him nicely and then ordered him in her bossiest tone and then finally pleaded. Words weren’t working. She dragged his legs and arms closer to the edge, but he always pulled them back. She considered poking his back. She’d do anything to save her brother’s life, even if meant inflicting pain.

Abby first decided to try one more thing and spoke one of her brother’s popular refrains. “Never give up, right?”

These words worked! They inspired him to not only rise, but to make it all the way to the first floor.

The residents were eating granola bars and cereal with soda. They poured the soda over the cereal. When the Leigh children received no offers of food, Abby looked around and found a can half-filled with cherry soda. She took a small sip and tried to get Jordan to drink some but he turned his head away.

Kenny announced that they would leave at nine o’clock and ordered Mandy and Jerry and Sam to accompany him. “Watch her,” he said to Mandy, referring to Abby. Abby thought that it would be difficult for Mandy to watch her since she had yet to make eye contact with her. Sam was the skinny kid who Jordan had nicknamed ‘Stick Boy.’ Stick Boy, sour-faced Jerry, angry Mandy, and King Kenny—some crew, Abby thought.

At nine o’clock Abby, Jordan, Mandy, Jerry, and Sam assembled outside. A heavy mist was bleeding from the overcast sky. Abby guessed the temperature was in the fifties. Tiny droplets clung to her like wet feathers and chilled her. Nobody offered jackets to her or Jordan, even though she suspected they had a huge pile of them, likely taken off the backs of weaker kids.

No one from either of the neighboring houses ventured out to wish them luck. Abby didn’t understand these kids.

“Where’s Kenny?” she asked the trio at ten o’clock. “We’ve already wasted an hour.”

They ignored her.

Kenny was making a point of who was in charge by making them wait. Agitated, Abby labored inside to confront him. A girl with sad eyes, moaning in pain, sat on the stairs. Abby felt her forehead and then gave her three Advil tablets. There was more than enough cherry soda still in the can for the girl to swallow them.

She gently touched the girl’s arm. “What’s your name?”

“Alison. Thank you.”

“I’m Abby. You’re going to be fine, Alison. You’ll get the antibiotic in a few days. Try to rest up.”

She wrinkled her brow. “The what?”

“The pills that kill space germs,” Abby said. “Did anyone tell you about the medicine?”

She shook her head.

Just then Kenny walked up to them and gestured dismissively to Alison. “Go up to your room.”

Alison slunk away like a frightened dog.

“She’s dying,” Abby said, stunned. “Knowing about the medicine would have given her hope.”

Kenny smiled slyly. “Information is power.” He bent down to tie his shoelace. “I’m not stupid. I know we’re going to Boston.”

“Of course we are,” Abby said, filling with panic. Had Mandy told him about the CDC broadcast? She hoped that Kenny was guessing, bluffing. “Boston is the biggest city around,” she added. “But you don’t know where in Boston.”

“Let’s go,” he grumbled, his dark eyes narrowing at her.

Abby took a deep breath to slow her racing heart. Kenny had yet to step outside his filthy house and he was already making trouble.

She returned outside and looped a piece of rope around Jordan and Jerry’s waists, essentially tying them together. Getting a dirty look from Jerry was a small price to pay for making sure that Jordan wouldn’t fall off the back of the motorcycle.

Kenny chuckled. “Hey, if he falls off, it’ll save you a lot of trouble. He’s not going to last much longer anyway.”

Abby fumed silently, reminding herself that several hours from now she would never have to see his face again.

The motorcycles rode in a column. Kenny, in the lead, turned onto Route 95 and headed south on the four-lane highway. Cars littered every lane, lying angled against the guard rail, some nosing over the embankment, a few had flipped over. Jack-knifed eighteen-wheelers lay on their sides. Some trucks had veered off the highway, leaving snapped trees in their wakes.

Abby wrestled her attention away from this metal graveyard when she spotted five cars driving north on the opposite side of the highway.

She pointed and shouted in Mandy’s ear. “Where are they going?”

She received no response.

Abby didn’t care that Mandy was ignoring her. They were on their way, she thought, the final leg of the journey. That’s all that mattered.

They rode past a concrete embankment which had ‘GOD IS ALIVE’ written in purple spray paint next to an image of the streaking comet. Abby wondered if some kids were worshiping the comet as an all-powerful being.

Further on, they passed over the green iron suspension bridge that connected Maine and New Hampshire, once a landmark for the Leigh family. Their home in Cambridge was ninety minutes from the bridge.

The motorcycles skirted through the Hampton tollbooths. Several miles beyond the tolls, tents and makeshift shelters were scattered in the fields and woods. Abby tapped Mandy and pointed again. Smoke curled up from campfires as curious kids, some as young as two or three years old, gawked at the riders flying by. Hope welled inside of Abby that some kids were living peacefully. As they continued, the number of dwellings increased. Laundry hung out to dry on clotheslines strung between trees. A field had been tilled, ready for planting. All of the motorcycles slowed to avoid chickens scurrying in the road.

Abby’s tears flowed freely as she witnessed what she had always believed existed on the mainland—a community where kids farmed, raised animals, took care of the young, a fledgling society, much like the one they’d started back on Castine Island.

They approached the Merrimack River, the border between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The river formed in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and emptied into the sea at Plum Island, Massachusetts. As they crossed the bridge over the river, shelters lined both banks for as far as Abby could see. That made sense. The river was a lifeline of fresh water. A flotilla of canoes paddled down the middle.

But why were no other vehicles heading south? Here and everywhere Abby was certain that kids entering puberty were dying by the thousands every week. There should have been a mass exodus to Boston, kids walking, driving, riding bicycles, even crawling toward the pills that offered them life over death.

There was only one explanation, she thought. Perhaps some kids on the mainland knew about the CDC’s efforts, but most did not.

Abby decided that after she and Jordan acquired the pills, she would spread the word to them. The river kids and those camped in the woods and fields could go to Portland in early June, or to Boston if more pills were still available, but first she and her brother had to save their own lives.

About five miles beyond the river, Kenny pulled to the side of the road and signaled the others to stop. “Bathroom break,” he called out.

Abby climbed off Mandy’s motorcycle and untied the rope around Jordan’s waist. As she helped him off the back of Jerry’s motorcycle, his legs wobbled and he crumpled to the ground.

“Oops,” Kenny said.

Abby bit her lip to keep from saying something she’d regret. She didn’t bite it hard enough. “Kenny, you believe babies are too much work to care for? How long did they live? What did you do with them?”

Mandy’s hand shot to her mouth.

“Do your business,” Kenny growled to Mandy and the others. He spit and said to Abby, “You’re lucky you live on an island. You wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes on the mainland.”

Abby had said enough.

She knelt beside Jordan, who mumbled something unintelligible, delirious with fever. “Hang in there, Jordie,” she said and pushed an Advil pill into his mouth. He coughed it out.

Abby hid behind a bush to pee. She’d only had a tiny sip of soda over the past eighteen hours, but the urge to go was constant. Squatting, she watched with concern as Kenny walked over to her brother. She wouldn’t put it past him to hurt Jordan as payback for her comment.

But Kenny did just the opposite. He signaled Jerry to bring over a bottle of water. He unscrewed the cap and held it to Jordan’s lips. Incredibly, Kenny seemed to have a good side to him. They were having a conversation.

Suddenly Kenny stood and pumped his fist. “Logan Airport!” he shouted. “Let’s roll.”

The gang members scurried to their motorcycles.

Abby realized that Kenny had somehow tricked Jordan into revealing their destination. She pulled up her pants and the ground started spinning. Abby toppled sideways from dizziness. With her heart thumping wildly and her cheek pressed against the dirt, she watched the gang roar off.

Jordan dropped his chin to his chest and felt a searing pain as his weakened neck muscles stretched. “If my head snaps off,” he said to himself, “so what? I don’t care.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Jordan.” Abby stood a few feet away, staring despondently down the highway.

Her voice startled him, and he wondered if he had spoken his thoughts.

“Just leave me here,” he said, exhausted and depressed.

Jordan cursed to himself for giving up the secret that he and Abby had been guarding so carefully.

“They’re sending the antibiotic by ship,” Kenny had told him.

The words swam around his feverish brain. Antibiotic? Ship?

“Jordan,” Kenny continued, “we need to go to the docks.”

“Docks” he said, confused. “No, don’t go to the docks. We’re supposed to go to Logan Airport.”

Jordan pictured Kenny still laughing at him as the gang had roared off on their motorcycles.

He cursed again for acting like a gullible ten-year-old. Jordan spotted the Advil tablet he’d spit out on the ground earlier, but made no effort to retrieve it. What good was taking it? His chance of reaching Boston, of seeing Toucan, of holding Emily again, had been lost. He’d die on the highway, halfway between his two homes, Castine Island and Cambridge.